Thursday, April 21, 2016

BioRxiv: First Detection Of Zika Virus In Neotropical Primates In Brazil

In Africa, where Zika originated, it was first isolated in a captive, sentinel rhesus monkey, which was being used for routine Yellow Fever surveillance. Like many arboviruses, the Zika and Yellow fever virus are often maintained in non-human animal reservoirs, like monkeys.

This cycle - where mosquitoes infect and carry the virus from non-human hosts, is called the Slyvatic (Jungle) cycle.

Arboviruses can also have an urban cycle, where no non-human host is required. We've seen this with Dengue, Chikungunya, and Zika in the Americas. It usually requires a fairly dense population of susceptible human hosts in order to sustain an outbreak.

In South and Central America, Yellow Fever has a Sylvatic cycle (Howler Monkeys), but so far it has been unknown whether Zika would find a suitable jungle reservoir host.

Today (h/t Greg Folkerson Twitter), we have a brief paper that suggests Zika may be finding a home in South American non-human primates.

Abstract

Samples
from sera and oral swabs from fifteen marmosets (Callithrix jacchus)
and nine capuchin-monkeys (Sapajus libidinosus) captured in Ceara State
in Brazil were tested for Zika virus. Samples were positive by Real
time PCR and sequencing of the amplified product from a capuchin monkey
showed 100% similarity to other ZIKV from South America. This is the
first report on ZIKV detection among Neotropical primates.

From the full text:

We tested samples from sera and oral swabs from fifteen marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) and nine capuchin-monkeys (Sapajus libidinosus) captured (SISbio license 45196-3) from July to November of 2015 in Ceará State, an epidemic area for ZIKV.

Preliminary detection of these samples indicated 29% of positivity (7/24) by Real time PCR2 (Cycle Threshold Ct average 31,64 to 37,78). We found four positive samples from marmosets and three positive samples from capuchin monkeys.